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Rice questioned over Indian deal

Facing tough questions about the US government's proposed deal to aid India's civilian nuclear program, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Congress on Wednesday that she would press New Delhi to back up its stated commitment to stop the spread of nuclear arms.

Rice said that she would push India, for example, to conclude an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency on safeguarding its civilian nuclear plants as a way of reassuring lawmakers, but that she could not guarantee that India would do so before Congress could vote on the deal.

"What I can guarantee you is that we will make every effort to push that process forward," Rice told Senator John Kerry at a hearing on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In a sign that the proposal may have more support in Congress than some of its opponents had suggested, Kerry said he would probably support the deal, especially if the administration could provide the assurances he sought.

A similar tentative endorsement came from another influential lawmaker, Senator Joseph Biden Jr, the ranking Democrat on the committee.

The qualified support from Biden and Kerry elated administration officials, who said they now believed they could build on the momentum from the hearings to try for a vote as early as next month or June.

Rice also testified before the House International Relations Committee, where the proposal got even more bipartisan support. That was considered significant because of the earlier vociferous criticism of some Democrats and misgivings expressed by the chairman, Republican Henry Hyde. An aide said that Hyde had not endorsed the plan but had not ruled out doing so.

Rice said the US was also pressing India to join a treaty to block exports of fissile material for use in making nuclear weapons, and international conventions governing the transport of chemical weapons and nuclear technology.

The nuclear deal, in which the administration has in effect proposed letting India bypass the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which it has not signed, would permit authorities there to receive vital help for their civilian nuclear power program while being allowed to retain or increase the nation's arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Many experts on proliferation have criticized the arrangement, saying it rewards India for defying the basic underlying philosophy of the treaty, which is that only countries that forswear nuclear arms can get help with their nuclear energy needs.

But there are also independent experts who favor the deal because it puts most of India's reactors under civilian auspices and therefore under international inspection.

Several Democratic senators said at the hearing that India did not deserve the deal, despite their desire to improve relations. Other lawmakers noted great support for India as an emerging power that could serve as a counterweight to China.

Rice sought to play up the importance of improving ties with India but she also warned bluntly that if the treaty negotiated by US President George W. Bush failed, bilateral relations would suffer dramatically and broader US interests in Asia would suffer as well.

Lawmakers expressed concern that the proposed deal curbed the power of Congress by leaving India exempt from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, rather than getting India to join and then allowing a waiver, which could be reviewed annually and approved by Congress if India lived up to its commitments.
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